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It's been a couple weeks since we last posted blog post featuring what SLayers are doing outside the office, so I thought I'd share my experience from a couple months ago when SoftLayer competed in the 2012 Annual DFW Dragon Boat Festival. As you may remember, Cassandra posted about SoftLayer's participation in the Houston-area Dragon Boat Festival, so I'm taking it upon myself to share the Dallas experience.

Let me start off by admitting to you that I'm no expert when it comes to dragon boat racing. In fact, when I was asked to join the team, I was reluctant ... I'd never done anything like a dragon boat competition before, and I didn't want to make a fool of myself. It took a bit of convincing from my coworkers, but I ended up signing on to represent SoftLayer as one of the twenty people in our boat.

As it turns out, I wasn't the only rookie. In fact, this was the first year we've had a boat full of newbies, so we all learned the ropes (or oars) of dragon boat racing together. We had practice on Home Depot buckets in the hallway for about two weeks before we actually hit the water, and by the time our on-the-water practice came, we already had a good feel for the basics of the race. Until then, I had no idea how small the boat was and how soaked we'd get while we were paddling. What had I gotten myself into?

My son was home from college over the race weekend, so I managed to get him signed him up as a backup rower. When we got to the lake, the SLayers were all very noticeable ... Our team was sporting the "Dragon SLayer" shirts, and the SoftLayer tent was abuzz with activity. There were other big companies there like AT&T, Sprint, the Dallas SWAT team, Penny's and Samsung, but we weren't intimidated — even when the other teams started talking smack when we broke out our Home Depot buckets to get some last-minute practice.

When we set sail — er... paddle — we were nervous. The gun sounded, and in a flurry of synchronized rowing, we found ourselves at the finish before everyone else in our heat. First race, first place. Obviously, we were excited by that outcome, so we were probably even more antsy when it came time to run the second race. We piled into the boat, made our way to the starting line, and after another flurry of activity, we won the second race! We were in the finals.

You can probably guess what happened next:

We won it all!

In the video, you can see that we started out slow but came from behind to take the victory (The video gets better at the end of the race). The eagle eyes in the audience will probably also notice that we rowed so hard that the dragon head came off of the boat.

Our practice on the Home Depot cans turned out to be pretty effective. My son Jeremy wound up playing a key role on the boat — the drummer — and he headed back to college with quite a story to tell his friends. All of the SLayers stuck around to accept our trophy, and we made sure to snap a few pictures:

Almost a year ago, I walked into SoftLayer for the first time as an employee, but it wasn't my first encounter with the business. I knew quite a bit about SoftLayer (and what it would be like to work for SoftLayer) because a family member and more than a handful of friends were already SLayers. By the time applied to join the company as an "API Evangelist," I had high expectations ... Or so I thought. As it turns out, I had no idea how outstanding working for SoftLayer would be.

When people talk about company culture, you usually hear buzzwords like "collaborative environment," "team-oriented," "transparency" and "progressive thinking." To a certain extent, they all sound a little forced and cliche, and it almost kills me that they're exactly the words I'd use to honestly describe my SoftLayer experience. Why? Because every day, I see people collaborating on news ways to innovate, execute code more efficiently and improve our systems ... And not only do I see that happening, I feel involved in those conversations as well.

In a day and age where it seems most companies do business like they are herding sheep, it's pretty phenomenal to work in an environment where employees are encouraged to speak, and when they speak, they are heard.

A surprisingly large part of SoftLayer's company culture involves getting employees out of the office. Yes ... I said out of the office! From baseball games to barbeque contests to dragon boat races, the SoftLayer team actually becomes more of a "team" when we leave the office. In my previous jobs, the last thing I'd want to do at 5:00pm on a Friday would be to spend a couple more hours with my work desk's neighbor. These days, I look forward to the chances to hang out with my coworkers outside the office. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's the truth.

Just look at the Pink Soles in Motion fundraiser to raise money and support the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Did it make a difference that the event was on a Saturday? Absolutely not. You could see SLayers in their SoftLayer gear everywhere you looked.

I am always impressed by the sheer number of people who love what they do and love being a part of SoftLayer. If you subscribe to the "SoftLayer Culture" RSS feed, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about ... That category is filled with posts from employees who can't help but share their love for SoftLayer with the world. When you get so many passionate and enthusiastic people under one roof, you get a with contagious excitement and the shared purpose of providing the best possible products and services to our customers.

When I walk through the office and see happy people talking about their work, I know I'm in the right place.

Thanks for the one-year anniversary, SoftLayer! It's been a great year.

If you want to put the SoftLayer culture to the test, check out the available Careers at SoftLayer to find an opportunity that can bring you onto the team. You won't be disappointed.

Here at SoftLayer, all the developers stay on Jabber all day so we’re all accessible. As you know, we’ve recently been doing a major piece of software development: the new API. During development, we all were trying to get things finished as well as continue our day to day operations.

No fewer than 4 times during the last 3 weeks I have had the following conversation with a fellow developer.

Me: Hey, I need you to do something on this API class you wrote.
Other developer: Ok, no problem.
Me: Wait, you didn’t write this, did you?
Other developer: No, I didn’t.

Each time, when faced with a request to understand and modify something that they didn’t write, in addition to their already overwhelming workload, my fellow developers were more than happy to accept the new task.

It just goes to show what kind of environment we all work in here. Everyone is always willing to help, and it’s this attitude that allowed us to develop the API so quickly with such robust features. Each developer was willing to help the others, and that resulted in a tightly integrated product that we’re all very proud of.

The same sort of attitude pervades all of SoftLayer. I have had help on tasks from Networking, Accounting, and Sales since I got here, and each time everyone is more than happy to help out. The end result is, of course, that the customer gets their problems solved faster, and gets higher quality services out it the deal.

But really, fellow developers, if you’re reading this also, it’s acceptable to say “I didn’t write that” when I ask you to change it. I won’t be offended. Half the problem is that we have 5 developers with names starting with J, I just clicked the wrong guy!